Just a heads’ up that tomorrow night, Thursday June 23nd, architect and designer Catie Newell’s project Second Story will have its opening at Extension Gallery for Architecture here in Chicago. Our Detroit correspondent Sarah Margolis-Pineo will be posting an interview with Catie Newell in the next few days. Photographs of Newell’s project Salvaged Landscape caught my eye last year, and ever since I’ve been wanting to learn more about her practice and the innovative ways she helps us to re-think the existing urban environment.

Catie Newell, Salvaged Landscape. Detroit, MI.

Here’s some background on Newell’s Second Story project and its team; visit her website for more information on her work.

Amplifying, transporting, and distorting the volumes surrounding and within a contested existing domestic environment, Second Story reconfigures spaces that were once familiar into an â€œotherâ€ occupation and visual register. Used to imprint the space and excite the atmosphere, this inhabitable texture is driven by the manipulation of factory standard acrylic rods to capture, manipulate, and distort the existing volumes of the second story of Spencerâ€™s Funeral home in Flint, Michigan, a house slated for demolition. Inherently transparent, the material both captures and permits the passing of light, visually distorting its presence and the view beyond, through refraction and reflection, altering both the context, the perception of its physical boundaries, and heightening the role of the building in the neighborhood. The work agitates, relocates, and makes accessible new volumes otherwise once unoccupiable: the exterior zone, the wall depth, and the depth of a windowsill. As a further technique of distortion and interplay of tectonic connection and assembly, the acrylic rods are systematically manipulated through the use of heat. One such technique allows for the bending and forming of components to create a pattern that resonates with its context, but also distorts the a priori relationships within the house to construct depth and volume originally unused or nonexistent. A further alteration is the tapering and pulling of the material, developing extensions and strands that flee in a near weightless in pursuit of space, altering the perception and depth they occupy. The otherness of Second Story is further heightened by suspending the piece above the ground by tethering it to the buildingâ€™s roof trusses so that it hovers to promote a ephemeral sense of space, an attuned acknowledgement of its surrounding, and an implied stretched atmosphere.

Versailles art show hit by injunction bidFrom the wet dreams of the marketing people behind Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami’s show at Versailles aÂ descendant of the man who built the Versailles Palace in France is seeking an injunction to prevent modern works by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami from being shown there.Â The legal battle is fronted by Sixte Henri de Bourbon-Parme in defence of “respecting the chateau and ancestors.”Â The ultra-conservative royalist has united with a group, the Versailles Defence Coordination, to file the suit, in which they stake a claim for the “right to access to heritage.” Read more here

Prince Charles offers to oversee London architectural planning
This week in “What could possibly go wrong?” Prince Charles offers to take on key architectural planning role in the vaccum created by the quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation that had its funding axed in the comprehensive spending review.Â The offer, announced by the foundation’s chief executive, Hank Dittmar, has been met with dismay by leading modernist architects who fear Prince Charles may use the role to advance his own traditional tastes in design. Read more here

Studio Manager Anne McIlleron talks about her boss William Kentridge
William KentridgeÂ who is the focus of Art:21’s first feature length documentary (recentlyÂ reviewed here and just broadcast on PBS this week) let his Studio Manager Anne McIlleron speak on what looks to be B-roll of the Art:21 documentary, its interesting but I am still of the opinion that William Kentridge wasn’t the best subject in the world to get this kind of treatment, just me I am sure. See more here

Google DemoSlam is previewed
Google has previewed a new site called demoslam built toÂ encourageÂ the creation and rank the best tech demonstrations on the net, part of me has long thought this was something the art world should have created a long time ago, free idea (hey get what you pay for) to whoever has the time and wants to put the work into it, Youtube was built for the Art worldÂ and aÂ projectÂ like this (even though we all wish it looked like Vimeo). Have at it and God bless at this point I just want a life for a while lol.Â Read more here